Khaitan & Co has hired Sudipta Bhattacharjee as an equity partner with his team of three lawyers in its indirect tax practice, to be based in Delhi.

He was a partner at Advaita Legal, best friend firm of Big 4 consultancy KPMG. He is specialising in GST, customs, state excise and indirect taxes.

We understand that his Advaita team that will be joining includes one lawyer with around 10 years of post-qualification experience (PQE) and two others with between four and six years of PQE.

Khaitan executive director Amar Sinhji commented: “We are very pleased to welcome Sudipta Bhattacharjee and his indirect tax team (from Advaita) to our firm.

“The strengthening & geographical expansion of our indirect tax practice has been a key component of our strategic expansion plans. The addition of Sudipta & his team will give a major fillip to growing our already well established indirect tax practice in India, especially in the North.”

Bhattacharjee is a 2005 NUJS Kolkata graduate who had begun his career at Reliance Communications in-house, before moving to BMR & Associates, then BMR Legal and its successor firm Advaita.

Advaita had seen a string of departures post the leaving of co-founding partner Sujit Ghosh in 2018 to become arguing counsel:

• principal Satyajit Gupta joined Star,
• principal DK Rana joined Nitya Tax Associates,
• partner Atul Dua left in 2019 to become an arguing counsel,
• Subodh Sadana, Ray Sharat Prasad, who had joined with Atul Dua from erstwhile Seth Dua Associates, joined Khaitan & Khaitan, and
• principal Gaurav Gupta set up Vantage Law Chambers.

The partners remaining at Advaita are Shailendra Singh and Monali Dutta.

We have reached out to Singh for comment.